Addict Torah: Behar 5784/2024

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Rashi on Leviticus 25:6

(1) 'והיתה שבת הארץ וגו‎‎‎‎ AND THE SABBATH OF THE LAND SHALL BE [FOOD FOR YOU] — Although I have forbidden them (the fruits of the sabbatical year) to you by stating “thou shalt not harvest etc.”, I do not mean to forbid them to you as food or to be used for any other beneficial purpose but what I meant was that you should not comport yourself in respect of them as the exclusive owner but all must be equal as regards it (the Sabbatical year’s produce) — you and your hired servant and your sojourner. ... (3) לך ולעבדך ולאמתך [AND THE SABBATH OF THE LAND SHALL BE FOOD FOR YOU]; FOR THEE, FOR THY SERVANT, AND FOR THY MAID SERVANT — Because it states (Exodus 23:11) “[but in the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still]; that the needy of thy people may eat”, one might think that they (the fruits of the Sabbatical year) are forbidden as food for the rich (and thus also for the owner of the field and his household), Scripture therefore states here: “[it shall be for food for thee,] for thy servant, and for thy maid servant” — thus you have the mention of the owners (the rich) here as well as of the servants and the maid servants — the poor (Sifra, Behar, Chapter 1 6). (4) ולשכירך ולתושבך AND FOR THY HIRED SERVANT, AND FOR THY SOJOURNER — Even non-Jews (Sifra, Behar, Chapter 1 7).

Rav Kook, from Shabbat Ha-aretz

The quality of life can only be improved through the affording of a breathing space from the bustle of everyday affairs...What the Sabbath achieves regarding the individual, the Shemittah achieves with regard to the nation as a whole...The temporary periodical suspension of the normal social routine raises the nation spiritually and morally and crowns it with perfection. A year of solemn rest is essential for both the nation and the land, a year of peace and quiet without oppressor and tyrant.

Inscribed on the Liberty Bell, in 1753, in Philadelphia, PA

“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Lev 25:10)

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 220, 222

This parashah is about release as well. We have to release the land from its work for a year. We have to release others from the debts that they have incurred. We have to release our resentments toward others and toward ourselves...Herein lies the heart of this parashah: release. When we are unable or unwilling to release our negativity and our hold on things, we are in violation of a basic principle of community. As Jews, we know that we have to live in and with community because so many of our practices and mitzvot require community for fulfillment. I ask the residents of Beit T’Shuvah to write down three resentments that they have—one or two of them could and should be toward themselves—and how they are going to release these resentments. I suggest that you do the same. If you think you have no resentments toward yourself or others, you are probably lying to yourself. This does not make you a bad person; it makes you like the rest of us—imperfect beings who are trying to be God’s partners.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 738

At the heart of this parashah is the visionary concept of returning land to its original owner at the end of a 50-year cycle. This prevents the polarization of society into two classes: wealthy, powerful landowners on the one hand and permanently impoverished people on the other. In an agrarian society, a farmer who sold all the land to pay debts had no prospect of ever being anything other than a servant...human beings cannot possess either the land or the people in perpetuity.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, p. 312

Letting go of what is mine is the basic posture of Shmittah. The hand opens, it does not clench itself, it relaxes its tension. In the long passage that follows, the physical imagery of clenching and relaxing is repeatedly evoked. Hand and heart both are bidden not to harden, to tighten against the impoverished kinsman. Generosity means releasing hand and heart, so that a full giving can happen. Your eye, too, the way you look at your poor neighbor, needs to soften: clear the evil in your glance and in your heart (Deut. 15:9–10). Do not refrain from giving and let your heart not resent the act of giving. A phenomenology of openness emerges from these images.

Rosh Hashanah 9b

The Sages taught in a baraita: The verse states: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a Jubilee for you” (Leviticus 25:10). The words “it shall be a Jubilee” come to teach that although they did not release property to its original owners, and although they did not sound the shofar, it is nevertheless a Jubilee Year, and the halakhot of the Jubilee year apply. One might have thought that although they did not send free the slaves it is also still a Jubilee Year. Therefore, the verse states: “It shall be,” this being a term of limitation. This teaches that at least one of the essential halakhot of the year must be observed, and if not, it is not a Jubilee Year.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, p. 311-312

Throughout their wanderings in the wilderness, those who were slaves in Egypt hanker repeatedly to return; fear generates a fatal nostalgia. Achieving release from Egypt has become impossible. Birth into a larger world involves the trauma of letting go: what Otto Rank called the “trauma of birth.” This is the paradigm of all other traumas of emergence. A key to this level of release is the ability to listen to what lies beyond the straits of fear. What God offers is a difficult liberty.

Rabbi Dr. Sue Reinhold, D'Var Torah on Behar-Behukkotai, 2023, at Congregation Beit Teshuvah, Los Angeles, CA

This week’s Torah includes shmita – the practice of letting the land have a year of shabbat every seven years. Now, in an agrarian society, not working the land for a whole year would lead to a lot of…anxiety! Would there be enough food? Would there be enough? That’s a good question for an addict – I know as an alcoholic the old saying that “one for me is too many but ten is not enough” – I mean, there was not enough alcohol in the whole world to satisfy my addiction.

And, to take things even further, this week’s parshayot also tell us that at the end of every forty-nine years, all the land in Israel goes back to its original owner from fifty years before. Jovel, or jubilee year. So, every fifty years, there was a complete reordering of Israelite society. After all, God says, the land doesn’t belong to you, really, it belongs to God. Talk about worrying if there would be enough – the economic world would get totally rearranged every two generations.

Now, the Torah is smart. It gets this – that a personal as well as social response to shmita and jovel, is one of anxiety, the Torah says:

(20) And should you ask, “What are we to eat in the seventh year, if we may neither sow nor gather in our crops?” (21) I will ordain My blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it shall yield a crop sufficient for three years.

Now, this is a world I want to live in. A world of abundance, where God provides. But you better believe they planted extra in year six. Which leads me to the observation: A shmita cycle really impacted you for four years: the few years before it, when you are preparing, the year of it, and the year after it, when your year eight crops hadn’t come in yet. That means that for about half of your waking life, you are doing this deeply spiritual practice of working, and meditating, on what is enough. Shmita and jubilee are really ways of keeping the Israelites spiritually fit. Without this chilling out effect of every seventh year and every fiftieth year, society would get overworked, acquisitive, ego-driven, dare I say addicted to work and wealth and bling and…likes and clicks and…hey….that’s sounding kind of familiar!

Instead, shmita and jubilee are a way to stave off addictive tendencies amongst the Israelites and in Israelite society.

So, Shmita and jovel are two incredible Jewish ideas, practiced by a tiny minority on a tiny little piece of land, archaeologists do know that ‘years to jubilee’ were counted, this society had the wisdom and the courage to stop and consider: what’s it all for? Who’s in charge?

And not only that. In ancient times, not only did you not work your land, what could be harvested off of it in the shmita year didn’t belong to you – it belonged to everyone. The Talmud even tells us, deep in tractate Ta’Anit, that during shmita, even the food in your store houses didn’t belong to you. So those pickles and beef jerky stored in your basement? Not yours. They belonged to everybody.

So, this is another way to stay spiritually fit – you trust in God, yes, and God is in charge, but you also support each other. The shmita year is basically a year in which a sharing economy is underway. Those who can, gift, those who can’t, get gifted. And in the jubilee everything gets sorted again, so that no one gets to hold onto too much for too many generations. God may not bless you with enough resources personally, yourself, with enough for you, but God has blessed us with enough, collectively, for everyone to get what they need. I know it works this way in my recovery community, and I imagine it works that way here at Beit Teshuvah as well.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 127

The blessing of Behar is the promise that when we keep these sacred rhythms, we are granted safety, security, a sense of being at home. The security that we are promised contains a spiritual challenge. The word in Hebrew is la-betach, which means 'security,' 'safety,' or 'trust.' So often we try to build a sense of security by acquiring posessions...Behar teaches us about a different kind of security that comes not from having, but from forging a deep relationship.

Rabbi Mark Margolius, The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 199

The Sabbatical and Jubilee years invite us to set down the tools by which we “work the land,” to relinquish what others may owe us, and surrender our inclination to control. To the extent that we can learn to “trust the process” or “go with the flow” of life, we may learn that the current carries us where we need to go. In practicing bitachon, we learn (in the terminology of twelve-step programs) to “let go and let God.”

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: Leviticus, p. 312

Much of human history has illustrated the fact that you can have freedom without equality (laissez-faire economics), or equality without freedom (communism, socialism), but not both. The powerful insight of the Torah is that you can have both, but not at the same time. Therefore time itself has to become part of the solution, in the form of the seventh year and, after seven sabbatical cycles, the Jubilee.

Pirahã tribe, Brazil
I store my meat in the belly of my brother.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 741

23. you are but strangers resident with Me Even the Israelites are but God's tenants, resident aliens in the Land. Only if they live up to the terms of the Covenant will they endure there.

Rambam on Leviticus 25:23

By way of the Truth, [the mystic teachings of the Cabala], the meaning of the expression for the Land is Mine [literally: “for ‘unto Me’ is the Land”] is like and they take ‘unto Me’ an offering. It is this which the Rabbis have alluded to here [by saying in the Torath Kohanim]: “It is enough for the servant to be as his Master,” for the Jubilee will be applying [even] in the world. The person learned [in the mysteries of the Cabala] will understand.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: Leviticus, p. 313-314

Because the land of Israel belongs to God, there can be no permanent freehold. God grants the Israelites possession of it on certain conditions, one of which is that the original owner can buy it back for a fair price at any time he has the money and wishes to do so. The other is that in any case, it returns to the original owner in the Jubilee year.

Rashi on Leviticus 25:35

(1) והחזקת בו THOU SHALT RELIEVE HIM — Do not leave him by himself so that he comes down in the world until he finally falls altogether when it will be difficult to give him a lift, but uphold him from the very moment of the failure of his means. To what may this (the differences between whether you assist him at once or whether you wait with your help till he has come down in the world) be compared? To an excessive load on the back of an ass. So long as it is still on the ass’s back, one person is enough to take hold of it (the load) and to keep it (the ass) up, as soon as it has fallen to the ground not even five persons are able to set it on its legs (Sifra, Behar, Section 5 1).

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, p. 64-65

By c. 2400 BC it already appears to have been common practice on the part of local officials, or wealthy merchants, to advance loans to peasants who were in financial trouble on collateral and begin to appropriate their posssessions if they were unable to pay. It usually started with grain, sheep, goats, and furniture, then moved on to fields and houses, or alternately or ultimately, family members. Servants, if any, went quickly, followed by children, wives, and in some extreme occasions, even the borrower himself. These would be reduced to debt-peons: not quite slaves, but very close to that, forced into perpetual service in the lender's household...the effects were such that they often threatened to rip society apart.

Taanit 20b

Rafram bar Pappa further relates: And every Shabbat eve, in the afternoon, Rav Huna would send a messenger to the marketplace, and he would purchase all the vegetables that were left with the gardeners who sold their crops, and throw them into the river. The Gemara asks: But why did he throw out the vegetables? Let him give them to the poor. The Gemara answers: If he did this, the poor would sometimes rely on the fact that Rav Huna would hand out vegetables, and they would not come to purchase any. This would ruin the gardeners’ livelihood...The Gemara objects: But if Rav Huna could not use them in any way, he should not purchase the vegetables at all. The Gemara answers: If nothing is done, you would have been found to have caused a stumbling block for them in the future. If the vegetable sellers see that some of their produce is left unsold, the next week they will not bring enough for Shabbat. Therefore, Rav Huna made sure that the vegetables were all bought, so that the sellers would continue to bring them ...The Gemara further relates: When Rav Huna would eat bread, he would open the doors to his house, saying: Whoever needs, let him come in and eat.

Kiddushin 20a, 14-15

As it is taught in a baraita: The verse states concerning a Hebrew slave: “Because he fares well with you” (Deuteronomy 15:16), which teaches that the slave should be with you, i.e., treated as your equal, in food, meaning that his food must be of the same quality as yours, and with you in drink. The baraita continues: This means that there shall not be a situation in which you eat fine bread and he eats inferior bread [kibbar], bread from coarse flour mixed with bran, which is low quality. There shall not be a situation in which you drink aged wine and he drinks inferior new wine. There shall not be a situation in which you sleep comfortably on bedding made from soft sheets and he sleeps on straw. From here the Sages stated: Anyone who acquires a Hebrew slave is considered like one who acquires a master for himself, because he must be careful that the slave’s living conditions are equal to his own.

Kiddushin 20a, 17-23

If a person has commercial dealings with Sabbatical-Year produce, which is prohibited, ultimately he will become so poor that he will have to sell his movable property, as it is stated: “In this Jubilee Year you shall return every man to his land” (Leviticus 25:13), and juxtaposed to it is the verse: “And if you sell any item to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor’s hand” (Leviticus 25:14), which is referring to an item acquired by passing it from hand to hand. This teaches that if one sins with regard to the Jubilee Year or the Sabbatical Year, which have many identical halakhot, he will eventually have to sell his movable property. If one does not sense that he is being punished and does not repent, ultimately he will have to sell his fields, as it is stated in an adjacent verse: “If your brother grows poor and sells of his ancestral land” (Leviticus 25:25). If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, he will have to sell his house, as it is stated: “And if a man sells a dwelling-house in a walled city” (Leviticus 25:29). The Gemara asks: What is different there, in the first sentence, in which the tanna says: He does not sense, and what is different here, in the continuation, in which he says: If no move toward repentance comes to his hand? The Gemara answers that this is in accordance with a statement of Rav Huna. As Rav Huna says: Once a person commits a transgression and repeats it, it is permitted to him. The Gemara is surprised at this: Can it enter your mind that it is permitted to him merely because he has sinned twice? Rather, say that it becomes to him as though it is permitted. Therefore, when he violates a prohibition a second time, the baraita takes for granted that he does not sense that he is performing a sin, and employs a different terminology. The Gemara resumes its citation of the baraita: If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, his poverty will increase until he sells his daughter, as it is stated: “And when a man sells his daughter as a maidservant” (Exodus 21:7). The Gemara comments: And even though “his daughter” is not written with regard to that matter in Leviticus 25 but in Exodus, nevertheless, it teaches us this principle: A person will sell his daughter rather than borrow with interest. What is the reason for this? His daughter can occasionally deduct money from her debt and use it to leave her master, but this interest continuously increases. The baraita continues its exposition of the verses in Leviticus: If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, he will eventually need to borrow with interest, as it is stated: “And if your brother grows poor and his means fails with you” (Leviticus 25:35), and juxtaposed to it is the verse: “Take no usury or interest from him” (Leviticus 25:36). If no move toward repentance comes to his hand, he will eventually need to sell himself, as it is stated: “And if your brother grows poor with you and sells himself to you” (Leviticus 25:39). The baraita further states: Not only will he be sold to you, a born Jew, but he will even be sold to a stranger, as it is stated: “And sells himself to a stranger [ger]” (Leviticus 25:47). And this sale to a ger is not referring to a sale to a righteous convert [ger tzedek], but even to a gentile who resides in Eretz Yisrael and observes the seven Noahide mitzvot [ger toshav], as it is stated: “And sells himself to a stranger who is a settler [ger toshav]” (Leviticus 25:47). With regard to the continuation of the verse, “or to an offshoot of a stranger’s family,” the Gemara expounds: “A stranger’s family”; this is a gentile, i.e., he will reach a state where he has no choice but to sell himself to a gentile. When it says: “To an offshoot of a stranger’s family,”

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, p. 303

It is striking that a history of serial misfortunes blurs into a history of serial misdeeds. Proof texts from our parshah are cited to provide the structure of events; but they are quoted out of context, so that their meanings are inflected. The rabbinic narrative becomes one of disregarded moral responsibility. The Torah laws apparently target the rich buyer of land and slaves. However, in this rabbinic morality tale, the impoverished seller who has fallen on hard times becomes the protagonist. Due to his own fecklessness, he is forced to strip himself of everything that gives him meaning and identity. He is held to account for the progressive loss of himself. He is reproached for his increasing alienation from himself, which culminates in his selling himself as an officiant in the worship of idols—that alien service (avodah zarah). He has, in a word, exiled himself from himself.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 224

Write yourself a letter congratulating and thanking yourself for giving freely to help another individual. Be grateful that you can give without expecting anything in return. Be surprised when the person gives freely to you or to another, and be joyous of the truth that you and others do give freely without needing to keep score. When we do this, we avoid and release resentments. When we do this, we get out of the slavery of comparison and competition. When we do this, we are growing in our path of imitating God a little bit better.

Rabbi David Kasher, ParshaNut, p. 253-254

But if the primary purpose of the verse is to keep people from submitting to human authority, then we might say that the whole relational dynamic of ‘God as Master and we as slaves’ is fundamentally a mechanism for preventing slavery. It is less about God’s desire to rule over people and more about how divine rulership undermines all earthly power structures. I become a slave to God so that I will bow before no human being.

Rabbi David Kasher, ParshaNut, p. 257-258

The shofar. The shofar sounding throughout the land. Where had they all heard the shofar before? On Rosh Hashanah, yes. But the echo goes back further. Where had they heard this sound first? At Mount Sinai, of course: "On the third day, when it was morning, there was thunder and lighting, and a heavy cloud was on the mountain, and the sound of the shofar was very powerful, and all the people in the camp trembled." (Exod. 19:16) And then God came down on the mountain. They could not see God, but they heard words. First, “I am the Lord your God.” Then the rest of the Ten Commandments. And then, at some point, said Rashi above, they also heard: The Children of Israel are slaves to Me, they are My slaves… But some of them could not hear it. Or maybe they heard it, but they didn’t hear it right. All they could hear, all that they knew, was that they were to be slaves. They didn’t understand that this service was meant to liberate them from slavery forever. They couldn’t understand it then. But now, fifty years later, the shofar blast sounds again, and they are suddenly back at the mountain. They see the lighting, hear the thunder. But now, this time, they can also hear the words. Now they can understand the real meaning of those words. They are finally, finally free.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 2021-2022

This pronouncement brings together the sanctification of time and the sanctification of space. The Sabbath is the most sacred time. The sanctuary (meaning first the Tabernacle and later the Temple) is the most sacred space. This dual command thus embraces everything.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 2, loc. 1872, Kindle edition

Judaism dreams of a world in which human dignity is real and the presence of God is manifest. Yet the world we live in falls excruciatingly short of that dream. ...To take Torah seriously, on the one hand, and to live with our eyes and hearts open, on the other, can be a harrowing project. And yet that is precisely what mature spirituality demands of us. Herein lies our challenge: How to hold on to the dream, how to nourish it and live by its lights, without losing all hope, without concluding that the way the world is, is the way it will always be. Judaism’s boldest response to that challenge is, in a word, Shabbat.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: Leviticus, p. 324-325

There is also a deep connection in Judaism – equally strange to the Western mind insofar as it was influenced by Greece – between law and narrative. In the West, there are narratives (mythic, historical, or fictional) and there are laws, legislated by parliaments and collected in codes. But the two literatures are utterly distinct. We know that constitutional monarchy emerged after the invention of printing and the spread of literacy, that democracy grew under the impact of the industrial revolution, and that the enfranchisement of women emerged as old social systems crumbled in the wake of the First World War. So there may be a connection between law and history, but they remain two different literatures with very little in common. Not so in the case of Judaism. The Torah contains both and weaves them together in deep and subtle ways. Law generates history and history generates law.